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Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

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Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#241

Post by adkadskhj »

djhdheke wrote: post #213
adkadskhj wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about Google employees here. Squint your eyes and they look like the same company.

Google gave us maps, Gmail, Google, android... Facebook is probably a net negative for the whole world. If fb would evaporate tomorrow no one would care.

Old Google gave us Google, Gmail - new Google has been continually making it worse and/or more evil. Maps and Android are probably a bit more of a mix though.

Regardless i'm not questing what Google _was_. I'm commenting on what Google _is_.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#242

Post by eivarv »

dcolkitt wrote: post #7

It seems strange that Google management would push so hard on this. Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic. What possible upside could there be that justifies forcing the issue and hurting morale by pissing so many people off? Sure, maybe there's an argument that a fully remote company has a hard time propagating a coherent corporate culture.…

I don't get it either.

I actually sat in a management meeting not so long ago, where we all agreed that efficiency and productivity was higher than before (according to our metrics) – and still, one of the people present said that they missed being able to just pop up, look over direct reports' shoulders, etc.

The rest of us confronted them with the fact that all of us – they too – had celebrated our progress moments earlier, and agreed employees delivered better than ever, but we were still unable to totally persuade them.

I find that infuriating, and kind of frightening.

Not only have managers all over the world done things like stuff people into open floor plans (despite the fact that it was never backed by science, and its selling points are now actually refuted by science), and thought that there is something "special" about physical co-location (ignoring the possibilities of video-conferencing for fifty years);

They are now actively going against better knowledge because of their own need for the feeling of control (which they'll never achieve, of course – slackers will slack anywhere), and will continue to use butts in chairs as a metric.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#243

Post by spoonjim »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #236
spoonjim wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Google management made this decision mostly on gut feel. But I think that it aligns with my own gut feel, which is that it’s going to be very hard for a fully remote team to invent the next Waymo car or iPad or whatever, and I also think that it will be very hard for a junior engineer to get the same learning remotely as they do colocated with 20 year tenured engineers. If I was CEO of Google I would hav…

> I agree that Google management made this decision mostly on gut feel. But I think that it aligns with my own gut feel There's another term for that: Confirmation bias. That's fine, but let's not pretend your opinion is any more valid than anyone else's, including the individual employees who feel differently. The reality is no one, here, is actually basing their opinion on data. Absent that this is basically faith.…

The difference is that the individual employee advocating for WFH is doing so because it’s better for them, not because it’s better for Google. The interests of capital and labor are not necessarily aligned here.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#244

Post by sgtnoodle »

macksd wrote: post #59

I've always been mystified by the state of remote work at Google, because I understood that they pushed pretty hard on being in the office. And yet I've had many video conference calls with various teams at Google over the last 8 years and in every single one, most of the Googlers on the call were obviously dialing in from home. I even flew to Mountain View once for a big all-day meeting. I got there, met my coworker…

While I was there, they had a big "mobile first" push, and they were encouraging employees to try working exclusively from phones and tablets one day a week. Of course as an embedded software engineer working within their IT policies, I had my gubuntu workstation, macbook, and a gubuntu laptop, and I also had a windows laptop to pull out once a month or so when I needed to run obscure windows only tools.

For a while I had to travel every couple months along with plenty of other coworkers. I worked a few days here and there from other offices and I don't recall there being any particular resistance to it. It was fun visiting other offices. I tried bacon syrup in my coffee in Ann Arbor, climbed around on a giant rope net in Pittsburgh, video conferenced with someone from inside a giant binocular in Santa Monica, and even had Google office lunch in Dubai.

We had a 6-12 month period of ambiguity / lack of project direction, and coupled with Google's (toxic in my opinion) perf/promo system it created morale issues. I personally was finding it difficult to make it to the office before 11AM most days, which my manager called me out on, but within the context of trying to understand why there were morale issues. My team was able to figure out the underlying issues and it got better, but that's right around when I decided to give Zipline a try, and it's been 5 years of really satisfying work with a great group of people.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#245

Post by dcolkitt »

jeffbee wrote: post #117
CarelessExpert wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Productivity” is not something a person can measure themselves. And management can ? Please, tell me how. Give me metrics and methods for measurement that can effectively capture productivity. What's the KPI for "strong corporate culture" or "innovation"? Because if we can't rely on individual experiences, then clearly the only other option is systemic measurements, so please, tell me how!

Well, if I was going to pick one organization in my experience that I think is best able to judge developer productivity it would be google. They have a team of organizational analysts who study it and have developed a pretty sophisticated model. Interestingly, in past research they found that remote work is the top predictor of developer productivity.

> Interestingly, in past research they found that remote work is the top predictor of developer productivity.

Positive or negative?

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#246

Post by throwaways885 »

hnnnnnnng wrote: post #223
throwaways885 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in, a significant chunk of candidates cannot write code, have outright lies on their CV, have never used anything other than visual basic, etc... In addition, basic statistics suggests you need all new hires to be better than 50% of the existing company, or your average skill level will go down, which makes hiring just hard mathematically.

Cannot write code is very different from cannot write code on a whiteboard to solve a difficult problem in a limited amount of time in a stressful setting where you constantly have to keep talking and explaining what you are doing and cannot pause to think.

I know that's a popular trope, but I really mean the 'cannot code' crowd. They are separate groups.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#247

Post by wfhbata »

pbuzbee wrote: post #239
wfhbata wrote: post #127

I’ve told myself I won’t go back to the Bay Area. SF is a joke and the peninsula is ridiculously overpriced even on a tech salary. I’ve loved the last year living outside of the Bay Area. On the other hand, the thought of whiteboard interviews at this stage in my life or taking a massive pay cut to work at a local company is not enticing either. So we’ll see what happens in a couple months when forced to decide. I re…

I agree. When I left the Bay Area at the start of the pandemic, I felt a surprising surge of freedom. The salaries and jobs in the Bay Area are great, but they come with the big caveat of choosing between (1) living near work, but spending a fortune to rent small, old apartments forever or (2) having a better living space, but with a nightmare commute. Why would I want to return?

> I felt a surprising surge of freedom.

Same, it was like a big weight lifted off of me. Felt great, and feels great except for the company’s return-to-office date looming over me.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#248

Post by jeffbee »

dcolkitt wrote: post #245
jeffbee wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if I was going to pick one organization in my experience that I think is best able to judge developer productivity it would be google. They have a team of organizational analysts who study it and have developed a pretty sophisticated model. Interestingly, in past research they found that remote work is the top predictor of developer productivity.

> Interestingly, in past research they found that remote work is the top predictor of developer productivity. Positive or negative?

I don't want to misrepresent it, but my understanding is that an expressed preference for working remotely is consistently associated with high self-evaluation of productivity. The abstract says "our results also suggest that software developers’ self-rated productivity is more strongly related to task variety and ability to work remotely."

https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#249

Post by UncleMeat »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #14

What people say they will do when there's no cost associated with an action and what people will actually do once a cost IS associated with the same action are frequently 2 different things. Bob Lutz, in his self-aggrandizing book "Gutz", describes the initial phase of an automobile design project where a survey is conducted asking respondents whether they would prefer a vehicle with heated cupholders. It turned out…

I'd wager there are two populations. There are people who prefer WFH but didn't move. And there are people who moved. I can't return to the office. It is too late. I moved to be closer to my family. The job doesn't outweigh that. If I can't work remotely, I'm leaving in September. My boss and my director both know this.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#250

Post by wfhbata »

sam0x17 wrote: post #232
CodeGlitch wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..or government work. I get to do meaningful work, and my employer REALLY cares about me (the amount of training we get offered is amazing). UK so YMMV.

Very true. I worked for the DoD for a few years and it's definitely a good job to e.g. settle down and have a family and work for 50 years at with good job security, benefits, etc.

I moved too from DoD to FANG, and I’m not sure how you can say this with a straight face. Nothing FANG does on its worst day is comparable to what DoD does on its best day.

That’s not to say the DoD is inherently evil from the bottom up. It’s just that the things activists love to hate about FANG (potentially contributing to border control, selling technologies to foreign governments, data collection), the DoD does ten times over.

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